How to Photograph Your Pet Cat

When photographing your pets it is important select an area which will help enhance the feeling you are trying to portray. For example if you wanted a tough shot of your Rottweiler you would chose a darker location using concrete and steel to promote strength. This shot is designed to make you go awwww, and without the location chosen and light used the impact would a lot less powerful. Warm tones are a must, so try this shot in the late afternoon or early morning.

1 x Telephoto Lensand (100mm +) this can add to the cost as you will need a lens that has an aperture of F2.8. A wide aperture allows you to get that blurry out of focus effect. The lower the number the more blur you will get.

Method:

1. Attach your lens to camera and screw on the circular polariser, you will need this at the ready when working with animals, so make sure your batteries are charged and your memory card has been formatted.

2. Select a position in the lawn (this will work best if your lawn is a longer), when looking, try to pay attention to the light; you will really want to be using early morning or afternoon light for this shot. You will also need a clean background so try to steer clear of fences, walls or anything that will create harsh horizontal lines. If you keep your view slightly elevated you should be able to crop tightly enough to just keep grass in the background.

3. Take a few photos to get your exposure correct. Setting your aperture to F2.8 and your ISO to 400 will allow you to achieve a fast shutter speed necessary to capture any movement, particularly useful when photographing children and animals. You can use aperture priority mode if you wish (Av for Canon and A for Nikon) this means the camera will automatically make exposure adjustments for you. This is convenient however not as accurate as manual modes.

4. Prior to taking the photo it may be worth researching the rule of thirds a rough guide which helps produce a more visually pleasing composition. For example, see how the kitten is not directly in the centre of the image, it has been positioned somewhere between the centre line and the edge. It may also be worth moving your auto-focus focus point off centre.

5. You may not think kitty will stay still enough for you to capture but try this, place a small amount of cat food just in front of where you want to take the photo. Go back and line up your shot, now leave the camera on the ground exactly where you are. Grab kitty and take them over to the food and place them in the grass facing toward the camera, and go back to your camera.

6. Hopefully the kitten has stayed with its food and now all you need to do is compose tour shot and wait for the kittens head to pop up and start snapping. Remember to keep the zoom tight but with enough space around the subject to assist in drawing the viewer across the photograph.

Note: A polariser is a fantastic tool for creating saturated colours like the green grass in this photo.